Colleagues,
I wanted to share with you the memo that I recently sent to department chairs and program coordinators requesting their help in completing the A&S FY10 budget planning document.
In that memo I included the instructions that were sent to the President’s Cabinet and the deans regarding the submission that needs to be made to the Budget Committee by November 21st.
The three key points in those instructions were:
• There will be no across the board increases in operating budgets.
• There will be $2M in new monies for FY10 (not including any new funding for faculty/staff compensation).
• For the most part, these new monies will be allocated to support the objectives of the five principles in the new strategic plan.
While the amount of new monies is substantially lower than previous years, given the current economic climate it is remarkable that we are talking about any new monies at all. We owe our thanks to Herb Peterson and the entire group at Spider Management for their longstanding careful fiscal management that puts us in this highly enviable situation.
Needless to say, we are going to need to make an extraordinarily compelling case as we present our argument for new funds, and we will want to carefully align our submissions with the new strategic plan. As a reminder the latest working drafts of the five planning groups are available online at http://strategicplan.richmond.edu/.
The five principles of the Strategic Plan are as follows:
Principle 1: The University will have an academic enterprise that will be connected, innovative, rigorous, and personal with the intent to foster faculty growth and ensure student success.
Principle 2: The University will be a diverse community, strengthened intellectually and socially by the range of knowledge, opinion, belief, and political perspective as well as background (race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, age, religious, economic, geographic) of its members. Students will, therefore, be prepared to contribute in a diverse and global workplace and society.
Principle 3: The University will be affordable for students who can most benefit from and contribute to the educational environment.
Principle 4: The University will be intentionally and compellingly engaged in the Richmond community and region as a method to shape, both educationally and experientially, its students and as a means to contribute its skills, energy, and goodwill to the identified needs of the larger community in which we are corporate and individual citizens.
Principle 5: The University will offer its students a distinctive experience that will be further enhanced in meaningful ways grounded in the preceding principles.
Requested information
Let me outline the information I need from each A&S unit and the timeframe for providing this information. I will divide my request into two parts: 1) Operating budgets and 2) Funding for new initiatives.
Operating budgets
You need to keep three things in mind as you review your operating budgets for any unusual inflationary increase or other changing conditions from FY09 to FY10.
First, operating budgets are to be used for critical instructional expenses. You should determine your needs and priorities based on how funding changes will impact student learning. Keep in mind that there are internal and external mechanisms to fund faculty and student research and that faculty travel and lecture funds are not operational monies. These funds are in a central pool and are allocated separately closer to the beginning of the new fiscal year.
Second, in 2002 we moved to “bottom line” budgeting. In essence this means that chairs and program coordinators are responsible for judiciously allocating their unit’s resources and making sure at the end of the year that the unit does not exceed budget. In this system, department chairs and coordinators—those who are in the best position to know a unit’s needs—manage program expenses and they are accountable for expenditures.
Third, in the past departments and programs have taken little or no operational budget increase, and we instead have invested that money in School-wide priorities. For example, in the last few years that method has enabled us to significantly increase funding for department lecture budgets, undergraduate research, and faculty travel. This year there is no automatic inflationary increase in operating budgets (last year there was a 3% pool). As such, the assumption is no increase, and we are going to need to make our case for any changes in operating budgets.
Here is what I need from department chairs and program coordinators regarding operating budgets:
1. What internal efforts have you taken to respond to budgetary concerns and to increase effectiveness? Perhaps you have developed a plan to reduce the amount of photocopying or the extent/cost of long distance phone calls. I am hoping that every unit will be able to give me at least one and perhaps multiple examples of internal reallocations and other means to address budget needs (without asking for more funding).
2. If you can’t cover your operating budget needs through reallocation then email me a brief explanation of your needs and let me know how much you can cover through internal reallocation and how much of an increase you are requesting. Remember each of these operational budget requests must compete with all other funding requests including funding for new initiatives.
Funding for new initiatives
New initiatives can be for either reoccurring items (a new faculty line) or one-time items (a faculty seminar to support development of a new interdisciplinary program). The likelihood of receiving funding will significantly increase relative to the degree to which the proposal supports one or more principles in the Strategic Plan. At our August Academic Council Retreat we discussed three new initiative priorities (in alphabetical order): 1) faculty summer fellowships, 2) new faculty lines, and 3) undergraduate summer research support.
Here is what I need from department chairs and program coordinators regarding funding for new initiatives:
1. Please provide a brief description of the new initiative including the cost and indicate whether the cost is reoccurring or a one-time expense.
2. Briefly describe how your proposal is aligned with the five principals of the strategic plan.
3. If your request is identified as a priority item I will ask you for more detailed information.
Timeline
October 21, 2008: Review budget request process at Academic Council
October 22, 2008: Budget process discussed at A&S Faculty meeting
October 24, 2008: All budget request information from departments and programs due to dean
November 4, 2008: Preliminary funding priorities discussed at Academic Council
November 21, 2008: A&S budget planning document due to Budget Committee
If you are uncertain about any part of this memo, please feel free to call me (x8128).
Thank you for being good stewards. I appreciate your work to achieve our goals by thoughtfully using our resources: financial, capital, and human.
Best,
Andy
